i feel my way around my words
in the dark, grasping for
a shape familiar not
to me but to some
prehistoric
noticer
who
illuminated
the whole enterprise
at once and beheld the interior
landscape of the human
soul, the biological
data structure
caressed
eternally
by
wavelets
of electrical impulses,
a template replicated like
the tolling of a great
bell into the brain
cases of a billion
billion hungry
apes,
and
played he the sounds that moved mountains,
a choreographed epitaph to an eagle's nest,
a watery pan flute symphony
How narrow the angle of reflection must have been!
that gave voice to the voiceless echo netted
in a palm mapped to our divergent path,
marooned in isolated silence, tapping away
tap tap
a telegraphic plea
deal negotiated in bad
faith for we are implored
still!
to listen not speak
and find our inward gaze opposed
by our inward gaze until we yield in defeat
peace by loss
the final sacrifice a lidless eye blind to all
we encompass that encompasses us and
i feel my way around my words
in the dark, grasping for
shapes my ancestors
recognized and
named and
walked
with,
shapes
unknown to us
in this beguiled era
where death groans
beneath the weight of life
we've heaped upon it,
where the only act
of creation left
to us is to
discern
truth
from
falsehood,
where our legacy
becomes a key fixed
to a lock that no longer turns
do we kneel
to those who whisper in the dark,
do we grant them sanctuary
by our absence,
do we concede without grappling
the message left behind by
that sinewy piercer,
ask!
you remnants,
ask!
his flightless bones mark for us a trail
burned into the night sky by
upward falling stars,
for if he saw
them
he
must
too have seen
us!
we,
his descendants tamed by wicked noise,
must cast aside the tools that disarm us:
the false history,
the false names,
the false burdens,
and wield once more the mystery
that belongs to us as the stamp
of our nature dictates,
pass through fear
as through
a veil
of
flame,
and return as conquerors,
our gaze fixed on a horizon
none yet can dream of,
and
i feel my way around my words
in the dark, grasping for
a manifold shape
i might
recognize
should i lay claim to it,
i might
illuminate
should i rise above the
sacrificial sleight of hand,
i might restore
to us
should i remember
as those dancing dead remember,
should i join my song to his and
break this fever dream,
should i yield only as they yielded,
to truth,
should i persist, endure,
hold fast to this thorny path,
unbroken as we are
unbroken,
still.
July 8, 2024
